Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4

Read: Psalm 23, Romans 8:26-39
Pilgrim’s Progress Stage 4 Part 7

Relate: I believe that the whispers in the dark would have been a very real and very personal thing for John Bunyan. In 1660, he was arrested for preaching at an unauthorized church. His sentence was supposed to be three months of jail time and a promise to never do it again. But that was a promise Bunyan could not make. What started as three months turned into twelve years. And prisons back then were not the same as prisons today. Prisons back then were often little more than underground cesspits known for their darkness, dampness, and poor sanitation. So John Bunyan was stuck in a small room for years, in the dark, with nothing but his thoughts. There is no way that his mind did not go back to those dark, lonely nights when he penned this section of Pilgrim’s Progress.

This place, the mouth of hell in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, was so difficult that Christian at times did not even know his own thoughts. One of those fiends snuck up to him in the darkness and whispered words of wickedness that Christian took for his own. Bunyan says that the journey was so dark and difficult that “he had not the wisdom either to stop his ears, or to know from whence those wicked words came.”

React: I can know a little bit about what I have gone through. And I can get a glimpse of what someone else might be going through. But none of us can really know and understand the war that is being played out in the battlefield of someone else’s mind. In fact, like John Bunyan describes here, at the moments when that battle becomes overwhelmingly intense in our own mind, we often cannot tell where our own thoughts end and the temptations of the enemy begin. If we can sometimes barely recognize the struggle within, how can we even begin to presume the thoughts and struggles someone else might be going through? And yet it is so easy for us to judge and to criticize and to condemn, isn’t it?

As an aside thought and a practical piece of advice, I want to point to the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation…” I have found in my own personal life that the most difficult spiritual struggles come late at night when I am tired and bored. If you have found the same, my advice might sound so simple to say, but tougher to do. Go to bed earlier. As Mr Miyagi in Karate Kid II says, “Best block, no be there.” The best way to avoid those whispers in the dark is to be asleep before they can even arrive. But how do you get to sleep if you are not tired? Easy. Wake up earlier so that you are tired. One of the best things that ever happened in my spiritual walk was the discipline of setting my alarm earlier and not using the snooze button. Not just because of the time I can spend with God in the mornings, but also because it helps me avoid those times battling the devil in the late night.

Respond:

Dear God,
Help me to recognize those whispers in the dark for what they are. As much as possible, lead me not into temptation. Keep me away from those dark and trying times. But when they do come, even when I must walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, help me to not fear the evil. Help me to remember that You are still with me and that Your rod of discipline and Your staff of redirection are still there as a comfort for me.
Amen

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